Following speculation over the involvement of Russian intelligence agencies in hacks on the computer servers at the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Obama said the USA could punish Russian for its role in the cyberattacks. Former senior officials can say all they want that the Russians can’t be allowed to do this to us, but if Obama decides it can be allowed, then it will be. “How do we balance those issues?” Cyber security experts and us officials, however, said they believed Russian Federation engineered the release of the emails to influence the November 8 USA presidential election. “So, I don’t think that it wildly swings what is a tough and hard relationship that we have with Russian Federation right now”, Obama said.
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Intelligence officials are warning that the costs of publicly blaming Russia could “far outweigh the benefits, if there would be any benefits”, and that United States revenge hacks, which may already be ongoing, risk provoking Russian hacks on actual important infrastructure.
A majority of voters in this latest poll also said that if the Russians had done what Republican nominee Donald Trump had suggested, and managed to get the e-mails through cyber-spying and then turned them over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this would either be good for relations (27 percent) between the two countries or would have no impact on ties (26 percent). “But that requires us to really be able to pin down and know what we are talking about”, he added.
“If in fact Russia engaged in this activity, it’s just one on a long list of issues that me and (Russian President, Vladimir) Putin talk about, that I have got a real problem with”. The revelations forced former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to announce her resignation after numerous emails suggested that party officials favored Clinton over rival Sen. A computer network used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the party’s fundraising committee for the U.S. House of Representatives were also hacked. The FBI is investigating the hacks at the DNC, the DCCC and Clinton’s campaign.
“What I can tell you without commenting on the specifics is there are a lot of countries out there that are trying to hack into our stuff. But we’re going to have to keep on at it”, Obama said. More broadly, we are trying to promote global norms and rules that say, there are certain things that states should not be doing to each other when it comes to cyber attacks.
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“We’re still early in the process”.
